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Zille’s Comments About A Popular Library Infuriates The ANC

Post by Chika Udeh

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Hellen Zille‘s recent comments about a popular library in Khayelitsha, in her state of the province speech, have infuriated the ruling African National Congress who saw it as a wide range of racial prejudice.

According to the party’s new provincial leader Khaya Magaxa, the Western Cape premier’s speech was one full of “white privilege and racial prejudice”.

Pointing out areas where he believed the Premier faulted in her statements. Magaxa said he and his entire party members feel disgusted by such unimaginable “discriminative comments” from her.

“Let me share one particular disgusting rant you made, and I quote: ‘A library in Khayelitsha has the highest book outtake in the country; can you believe it?

“Premier, you then repeated this comment as if to further prove how racial ideology and discrimination has embedded itself in your outlook,” he said.

“I would like [to] ask what exactly is so unbelievable? Is it the fact that black people actually can and do read?

“Or is it the fact that a library which barely has any resources due to the skewed allocation of funds in this province is actually excelling? Or perhaps even both?”

More to this, ANC’s Carol Beernwinkel, who had a speech titled Black Lives Have Always Mattered” at the legislature said she noticed that in the Western Cape poverty and deprivation is a synonym for being black. “Black lives and not only their votes have always mattered to us, the premier”.

Beernwinkel further pointed out that Zille’s speech had painted a “utopia that exists only in her head, in affluent areas and in her desktop report.

“Your speech said nothing about how you will dispel this notion of a white-privilege method of governance, she lashed out at the premier.

Meanwhile, the ANC got a sharp retaliation as members of the Democratic Alliance (DA) reacted to Magaxa’s criticisms by saying that the speech was “hollow and lacking in content”. The party on their own part pointed out the ANC’s failures in the national government, the municipalities and the provinces it runs.

To this, the Housing MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela alleged that it has been in the sole interest of the ANC to divide South Africans along racial lines.

“Members of other races [other than black] in the ANC must be feeling like an endangered species.

“We are very much aware that the ANC’s strategy is to divide South Africans along racial lines in order to maintain power,” said Madikizela.

Interestingly, the Social development MEC Albert Fritz described magaxa’s speech as being hollow and the Premier’s speech as ‘the biggest joke ever.

On the other hand, EFF‘s Bernard Joseph said Zille’s speech was a mockery of the provincial government’s claim of good governance. He said “good governance se voet” as he highlighted DA failures such as the Blikkiesdorp housing saga, farms evictions and the province’s high crime rate.